The characteristic features of our time are globalization and the intensification of human activities, which lead to large-scale changes in the environment. There are more crisis points, they are interconnected, and the problems that arise at the same time become more complicated. In this case, we should already talk about the possibility of a global environmental crisis, and therefore any more or less large project should take into account environmental risks. That is, each object of geo-ecological research is considered both as an independent self-organizing system and as part of a larger system. It is the initial approach to the study and construction of a conceptual model, the trajectory of data processing of the object of research that currently causes the greatest number of disputes and difficulties. Often, the entire volume of problems related to the interpretation of data, their lack, complexity of processing, inconsistency with the real state of affairs, is associated precisely with the initial spatial approach to research, that is, with the sphere of epistemological tools of the thinking style.